The Invention relates to a single needle and a single guide bar warp knit fabric structure. This fabric is made using short hook needles of the latch or compound type to acheive the directional stability by this method of production. The simplest form of warp knit structure is derived from a system of parallel threads of yarn led from a warp beam through individual thread guide eyes mounted on a single guide bar. One thread for each needle is laid simultaniously as overlaps in front of the needle hooks.
The fabric is composed of courses of loops connected across the width of the fabric by the underlap threads and with wales of loops parallel to each other up the length of the fabric. The fabric produced is loose and flexible with low bulk and stability. A thread break or dropped stitch may give rise to a hole or ladder run down the wale resulting in two seperate pieces of fabric. Despite the economic length of thread employed the fabric has limited technical and commercial use.
It is known that thread lapped over two needle wales at each course produces two loops at every needle. More stability and bulk is acheived but there are problems of equal thread distribution to each needle as loops are drawn into the wales at every course.
It is also known lapping yarns over three needle wales at each course by using yarns with elastic characteristics. This process allows some loop length correction between wales. The stability and bulk of the fabric is further improved with three loops on each needle at every course.
Each of the above methods with one thread for each needle increases the length of thread used. This is the result of each wale receiving the number of loops equal to the wales overlapped at each course.